ABSTRACT
They do not generally apply anywhere else. This has strengths and weaknesses – if in the UK you create or publish an original copyright work (like this book) you will have the full protection of UK copyright law, but if you find your copyright is being infringed in, say, Turkey or China, there is nothing UK law itself can do to help you and any legal remedies you may have will largely be dependent on local Turkish or Chinese law and on local courts. As you can imagine, some countries have better laws (and offer better protection) than others. In an Internet age, this worldwide patchwork of very different legal regimes is already proving a challenge. If material which infringes copyright, or libels someone, is created in New Jersey, uploaded to a server there, hosted on a UK website and downloaded in France and Saudi Arabia, whose law should govern the resulting dispute, and whose courts should have jurisdiction to try the case? This is no tiresome technicality – for publishing today, this can matter a great deal, since some laws are relatively liberal while others can be positively restrictive.
